Introduction

Software is getting close to allowing for automated speech-to-text, but it is not quite there. In the meantime, there are some best practices and tools that allow you to speed up and automate parts of the transcription process.

Essentially you have three options to move from an audio recording to a text transcript. The first is “hand transcription,” by which is meant typing up the transcript as you listen to the audio. The second is “speaking transcription,” by which is meant speaking the transcript into a transcription engine as you listen to the audio. The third is “automatic transcription,” where you feed an audio file to software that produces a transcription. This guide will suggest a few tools and techniques for each method.